Not even if Nikki Haley is the R nominee and Sherrod Brown is the D nominee, no.
1) If you believe that Ohio and Iowa will be competitive because Trump isn’t on the ballot as the nominee and that WWC will (somehow) swing back to 2012 margins, you might as well use the inverse of that argument for Virginia and Colorado, but that is obviously a ludicrous suggestion that would get laughed off.
2) The rationale to why IA/OH trended R are not limited to Trump’s unique WWC appeal, and the rationale to why Virginia and Colorado trended D are also not limited to “Orange Man Bad” (Reminder that Virginia was only D+5 in 2016, with Kaine on the ticket, and Trump obviously being a horrific fit for the state).
I cannot comprehend why certain wish-casters on this forum are so desperately obsessed with deluding themselves into believing that those two states are magically competitive, or that the RGV/Miami shall somehow magically swing back to 2012 margins, or that a Trump-less GOP would return to 2004/2012 levels with college educated white suburbanites (also a delusional concept), but none of that is occurring any time soon.
You are probably right but some places did swing back even in 2020 but maybe that's the full extent of any "coming home". There were a lot of unique circumstances. What I predict is that Ohio probably does keep trending right until and unless Columbus can grow as fast as the rest of the towns in the state stop shrinking. At this rate, Ohio is basically beginning to look just like Indiana, where, like Missouri, you have the rural areas being heavily Southernized and though cities like Cleveland and Kansas City feel like little Chicagos, though they might have had the votes to swing a state with 2:1 rural areas, they don't have the margins to swing 4:1 rural areas. Not even close. I think Iowa will be a swing state again but maybe not for another 20 years. There's good growth in Des Moines, but places like Dubuque, QC, or Cedar Rapids are no different than your Daytons, Akrons, Scrantons, Garys, and Auroras.
RGV, Clark County, and South Florida are unique in that you had the one-two punch of people caring less about immigration and more about COVID restrictions. Another interesting thing about race relations is that third parties try to "get on the winning team" when conditions deteriorate between two other groups. Both of these things could weigh on things for just a little while or a long time.
If it was just for a little while, Democrats will probably do well enough in the southwest to win Arizona and comfortably in Nevada and to keep Florida and Texas in contention (and might even win one). This makes it very hard, but not impossible (harder than 2016, but still doable), for Republicans to win. If Democrats lose ground in the rust belt and can't make up for it in AZ,TX, and FL, then they have a choice to make whether we have reached a point as a country where focusing on Civil Rights for anyone in particular can deliver.
